Dehumanizing Incarcerations
The 8th Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment,” yet it occurs daily in prisons throughout our country.
"Violence is an easy thing to see and to condemn, but understanding the ceaseless degradation and neglect going on once inmates are incarcerated is much harder to grasp."
The nation’s second largest prison is located on a four-hundred-acre island in the East River, between Queens and the Bronx, called Rikers Island.
The United States attorney of Manhattan, Preet Bharara, describes Rikers a place with a “deep-seated culture of violence.” Recent investigations have shed light on the fact that this dismal and dangerous institution is rife with attacks by officers on inmates. Bharara states, “For adolescent inmates, Rikers Island is broken. It is a place where brute force is the first impulse rather than the last resort, a place where verbal insults are repaid with physical injuries, where beatings are routine while accountability is rare.”
Cecily McMillan, a New York activist sentenced to ninety days in prison for “felony assault of a police officer” after an occurrence during the Occupy Wall Street protests, was recently released from prison. She took the opportunity to read a statement that she and the women of Rikers Island drafted together during her message to the press.
“Incarceration is meant to prevent crime. Its purpose is to penalize and then return us to the outside world ready to start anew. The world I saw at Rikers isn’t concerned with that. Many of the tactics employed are aimed at simple dehumanization.”
This shocking dehumanization is taken out on inmates, most of whom—85 percent—have been convicted of no crime. These people are drawn from the poorer sections of the population, and are held in pretrial detention because they don’t have enough to pay their bail. In addition to the physical brutality these inmates are subjected to, the system that controls them is intrinsically unfair.
The scandals emerging from Rikers include medical neglect and misconduct as well as the established physical violence.
A New York Times article published in July 2014 stated that in “an 11-month period last year, 129 inmates suffered ‘serious injuries’—ones beyond the capacity of doctors at the jail’s clinics to treat—in altercations with correction department staff members.” Of those injured, 77 percent were diagnosed with mental illnesses. On top of this shocking information, guards were found to have pressured prisoners into staying quiet about their injuries and threatening them with further violence if they went to seek medical help.
It is true that the men and women at Rikers have been accused, and, in some cases, convicted of crimes. Despite this fact, it is completely unacceptable to deprive these people of their basic rights to care and safety. Freedom from torture is a human and constitutional right and the ongoings at Rikers need to be thoroughly addressed if the “deep-seated culture of violence” is to be broken. ♥